Hemingway and the creation of twentieth-century dialogue - American author Ernest Hemingway

Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1996 by Robert Paul Lamb

By the end of the deleted opening, then, Hemingway is using dialogue to crystallize relationships, express character, and advance plot. Furthermore, in their speeches the characters display both calculation and involuntary self-revelation. Lastly, the author is turning away from narrative commentary; experimenting with omission (the events of the previous night that underlie the final scene are referred to but never explicitly mentioned); and using highly verisimilar simple discourse. In the story that follows, "Indian Camp" proper, he will employ all of these techniques and extend to dialogue, for the first time in fiction, all the devices of indirection, juxtaposition as a way of having meaning derive from proximity, irony, miscommunication, and compression.(2)

The final passage of dialogue in "Indian Camp" is particularly illustrative. In the story, Nick and his Uncle George accompany Dr. Adams on an unanticipated visit to an Indian camp where a pregnant Indian woman is suffering from a difficult labor. Nick is forced to assist while his father performs an emergency cesarean operation with fishing equipment and no anesthetic. After the successful operation, Dr. Adams's preoccupation turns to egocentrism, causing George to resent him. Then he discovers that the woman's husband, confined to a bunk over his wife due to a foot injury, has taken his life by cutting his throat during the operation. The discovery deflates the doctor, who suddenly concerns himself with his son's welfare; he takes Nick from the shanty, leaving George behind to await the authorities. The last passage of dialogue reads:

"I'm terribly sorry I brought you along, Nickie," said his father, all his post-operative exhilaration gone. "It was an awful mess to put you through."

[Q1] "Do ladies always have such a hard time having babies?" Nick asked.

[A1] "No, that was very, very exceptional."

[Q2] "Why did he kill himself, Daddy?"

[A2] "I don't know, Nick. He couldn't stand things, I guess."

[Q3] "Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"

[A3] "Not very many, Nick."

[Q4] "Do many women?"

[A4] "Hardly ever."

[Q5] "Don't they ever?"

[A5] "Oh, yes. They do sometimes."

[Q6] "Daddy?"

[A6] "Yes."

[Q7] "Where did Uncle George go?"

[A7] "He'll turn up all right."

[Q8] "Is dying hard, Daddy?"

[A8] "No, I think it's pretty easy, Nick. It all depends." ("Indian Camp" 18-19)

In his first speech, Nick's father admits his mistake. His use of the diminutive "Nickie" suggests that he is now concerned with Nick's anxieties, but in trying to comfort his son he also betrays his own feelings of guilt. His apology is not for Nick's having seen the dead Indian (which could not have been anticipated), nor for his thoughtlessness in having Nick attend the horrifying operation (which was his only irresponsible act). Instead, he apologizes for bringing Nick along in the first place (his least questionable decision), which undercuts the apology by passing over his truly unconscionable act. What he had previously termed a "little affair" (the operation), he now calls an "awful mess" - an understatement that covers all the events Nick has witnessed (including his father's paternal inadequacies) and, by its euphemistic nature, continues to diminish the apology. The last phrase of the statement shows Dr. Adams looking at these events from Nick's perspective ("to put you through") in order to console him, but his guilty feelings are manifest in his use of an inert construction; a more direct admission of culpability would have been: "I put you through an awful mess." By his need to assuage his own guilt, then, the doctor's apology is involuntarily self-revelatory: He is still mainly concerned with his own needs, not his child's.